Canada’s Commonwealth Games athletes arrive amid uncertainty

By Bill Mann

Bad news continues to pour out at New Delhi’s Commonwealth Games site.

An Indian bantamweight boxer ended up on the canvas — after his bed collapsed in the athletes’ village.

A deadly three-foot cobra was spotted slithering down a drain at the Games’ tennis venue, and the Sun in London, which is calling them “The Calamity Games,” also reports that a South African athlete spotted a snake in his room. Recent monsoon rains have driven the serpents into the Games dorms.

Canada has had an advance team working at the bedraggled-looking dormitory site of the Commonwealth Games, which begin Sunday in New Delhi. That’s helped quite a bit.

They’ve cleaned about half the rooms and gotten the elevators working, but there have been other problems at these trouble-plagued games, which will host athletes from around the British Commonwealth. “Bed counts have become more important in Delhi than medal counts,” wrote Toronto Star columnist Randy Starkman.

Canadian advance teams were among the first to discover the construction and filth problems and alert other yet-to-arrive countries, and, says a CBC report, “is in their corner.”

All this and mosquitoes, too

One CBC report says that Canadian advance staffers left several newly cleaned rooms open, with lights burning. But that attracted mosquitoes, which have been responsible for an outbreak of dengue fever locally.

As athletes arrive for the Games — many with fingers crossed that they’ll have habitable accommodations — India’s New Delhi Chief Minister has been racing around the site in a golf cart, trying to get things ready for the athletes from all over the world. “We inherited a very difficult situation, but it’s improving by the hour,” the CBC’s Commonwealth Games site quotes minister Sheila Dikshit (cq) as saying.

The first members of Canada’s team were due to arrive in Delhi Monday. A few have chosen not to make the trip because of the unsanitary conditions in the athletes’ village, footage shown to Canadians on CBC-TV this past week.

“Unliveable” dorm rooms

The head of the Botswana contingent called the rooms “unliveable.” He cited construction debris and filthy sheets in the rooms.

Dr. Andrew PIpe, head of Commonwealth Games Canada, said this week that Indian officials have received complaints for some time about the site’s deficiiencies, but these complains were met with “stupefying” indifference.

Also, two tourists were shot in the area recently, so Canada, well-prepared, has its own security force in place for the troubled games.

A pedestrian bridge at the Games site, as well as the roof of a wrestling facility, collapsed last week. India has been scrambling to get its act together amid local flooding and a torrent of negative international bad publicity.

The Games are held every four years, and bring together 7,000 athletes from 71 countries and territories across the former British Empire.

Since the modern Commonwealth Games started in 1930, Australia leads the overall medal count, followed by Great Britain. Canada is third, New Zealand fourth.